What’s negotiable on a purchase? The short answer is everything. There may be standards and traditions in your area, the same as there are in mine. That doesn’t mean they are not subject to amendment by specific negotiation. Once you get outside legal requirements, anything is subject to negotiation. As long as both (or all) …
Category Archives: Buying and Selling
What is Real Estate Worth?
One of the most common questions in real estate is “What is this property really worth?” The easy answer is the same as the deepest, most profound one I can come up with, “Whatever you can get someone to pay for it.” It’s the answers in between that you’ve got to watch out for. The …
Leverage – Making a Decent Investment Spectacular
One of the concepts I keep seeing without a decent treatment is the concept of leveraging an investment. Real Estate has this like no other investment. You go talk to a bank about leveraging eighty to ninety or even one hundred percent of your investment in the stock market, or the same percentage of a …
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Did That Slap On The Back Leave a Knife?
One of the things the place I work does to attract clients is advertise foreclosure lists to our clients. Several times a week, people call and ask for the lists, and we say, “Great! Just come on down, fill out a loan package and an agency agreement, and we’ll get them to you fresh every …
Buy Now vs. Wait: Some Practical Hypotheticals
I am hoping to buy in the (city) area and am reviewing the possibilities. While I fear that the local market may be peaking, I intend to live in the home for at least ten years, so I am not trying to time the market. My questions have to do with the down payment. I …
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Buying Below Market
This question: What real estate office can I trust to help buy below market house in (location) California in the year 2006? brought someone to the site and I have not previously written a real answer to the question. The short answer is “nobody.” This doesn’t have to do with trust. It has to do …
Seller Paid Closing Costs (or, When Your Prospective Buyer Has No Money)
In many transactions these days, the buyer has absolutely no money, or an amount that is not sufficient to pay the costs that they would traditionally be expected to pay in order to close the transaction. Nonetheless, in today’s buyer driven market, often the seller still wants to do business with them. The usual way …
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Related Party Transfers of Real Estate – Family, Corporate, or Partners
One of the things that has a lot of issues is any transaction between related people. Actually, this is not limited to purely family transactions, but applies also to transfers among partnerships and their partners, corporations and their officers The market theory holding that the value of a property is what is agreed to between …
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Lump Sum Payments on a Mortgage and Alternative Investments
This one came from a search engine: amortization of real estate loans early payoff based on a lump sum payment This is one of the smart things you can do. Not necessarily the smartest, mind you, but smart. The question is if there’s a better way to get a return on that money, wither by …
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The Basics of 1031 Exchanges
Section 1031 of the IRS Code has to to with tax treatment on the exchange of one parcel of real estate for another. It’s similar to Section 1035 which covers most non real estate exchanges. Car for a car. Boat for a boat. Business for a business. But section 1031 allows indirect exchanges so long …